¡Important! ¡Must Read!

          I feel compelled to inform the viewer of this blog of a few things before they continue any further.

          This blog was originally for an English essay. I feel that during my time writing it, it has become so much more than that. The reader will note my trademark biting rhetoric throughout the blog, and the reader will wonder, "Why is he so caustic in a blog for a school project?" All will be explained in due time, dear viewer.

          Blogs are a unique medium. They allow the audience to interact with the author in a way that has never before been seen. It is a personal connection; when you are reading a blog, you aren't just reading a piece of literature, you're connecting on a very deep level with somebody that you may not even know. When an author writes a blog and trims out all the little snippets of their personality, whittling it down to a more academic form, then that connection is lost. 

          Given this information, then, I have chosen to leave behind all those little personal tidbits that I had originally planned to take out. This blog is meant to be informative on my volunteer time at the art museum, but to interpret what I say about my experiences at the museum you have to know me. To let the reader bask in the marvelous glow of my personality so that they better interpret my words, I have taken a giant leap of faith and let myself show through the blog.

          Letting my glorious and bright visage blast through to the dank and oppressive world that exists has been a marvelous experience. Over the course of these writings I have grown as a person and have learned to think more critically of myself. For this, I am thankful for the project. However, this also means that the blog takes on a more personal note, as it is not just a school project but an epic journey of self discovery.

         I'm a fairly caustic person; my favorite pastime is making fun of things that I find silly, particularly political views or religion and ranging into really poorly made Pokemon teams. As I am letting my personality shine through my blog, you will be exposed to some rather caustic material. If you find anything to just be too overwhelmingly offensive and cannot tolerate a moment more of my shenaniganous tomfoolery, I implore you to simply skip past it.

          Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you enjoy it (and volunteer at the museum),

          Dane

          P.S.- No cutesy MS Paint drawings today, I fear. Sorry.      :'-(

Look at this Hat. Servitude.

Blog Post 3:

           

Dear Texas Academy of Leadership in the Humanities student,

The thought occurred to me as I was writing this letter that “servitude” is a really great word, and that it is my deepest desire to use it in a piece of writing. So there.

            On an unrelated note, I implore you to volunteer at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas. Not only is the work that you will do invaluable, but it will also help you to become a better person and lead a more fulfilling life and help you to learn more about your thought process. This was me before:

            And this is me afterwards:

           Artistic liberties have, of course, been taken (my hair is a little bit shorter in the back and longer in the front, and my eyes are quite a bit lower). But the point remains that I was significantly changed by the whole affair, in what I believe to be a positive manner.

           Since you were able to get into TALH, it stands to reason that you are a pretty smart cookie. As a fellow smart cookie, I commiserate with you for your desire to do great things in the world. I, at least, felt that as a being gifted (read: randomly selected by the cruel whims of nature) with the magical property of intelligence I was obligated to do great things. However, planning a life around the goal of simply "doing great things" is difficult, to say the least. Fortunately, volunteering at the museum can easily fulfill that goal. I have truly enjoyed my time there, and I feel that you will as well. The people are nice, the work isn't too difficult but is still fulfilling (once you learn how to appreciate it, anyway), and sometimes you get snacks (<--really want to buy that now). What more could anybody ask for from a service project? In addition, you will truly feel that you are making a difference in the world.

          Dear reader, forget momentarily your inhibitions on reading my blog in a serious manner, and listen to what I have to say.

          I've done a lot of volunteering in my time. As a Boy Scout I served for countless hours around the county at various small-town-Texas-doesn't-really-matter projects, and I really never received the satisfaction from service that I so desperately craved. Who knows? You may have found some form of satisfaction somewhere else, and so can't relate to this unfulfilled yearning.

         If you haven't had that satisfaction of making a difference in the world, you really must volunteer at the museum. It fulfilled my sense of longing, and I'm sure that you will be fulfilled as well. But even if you have had the pleasure of feeling that satisfaction, then I still implore you to consider the museum as your primary volunteering venue. I promise that you will not regret it.

        *Switching back to confusingly satirical/ironic/brilliant mode*

       If you don't volunteer at the museum, then everybody that you have ever loved will die on Friday, March 5th, 2037, at around 5:00 AM. I know that this claim seems a little bit far fetched, but do you really want to take that chance? Also at the same time you will find a shiny Charizard card (1st edition!!!11!!) but then it spontaneously bursts into an eerie green conflagration and you hear the voices of one thousand dead Pokemon moaning their sad, sad Pokemon stories that will never be known to this realm. And then you will stub your toe. In short, you really want to volunteer at the museum, because otherwise a lot of bad things will happen and that will really stink for you.


Thank you for taking volunteering at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas into consideration,

             Yours truly,

              Dane

          

Adolf Hitler = Jesus = Boy Scouts

            In my first post, I discussed, to some degree, my pre- and misconceptions about the nature of my work at the museum and the impact that it would have. However, I feel that it is entirely necessary to further address these issues, as they are rather complicated.

            I thought that I would be doing grand work, glorious work, which would somehow lead to fame and honor, and, more importantly, to being a large influence on the children. While it is true that I also thought that I would be advancing the human race, selfish desire for the aforementioned items played no small role in my decision to volunteer at the museum. I have a *bit* of a superiority complex, and what better way to be superior to the average individual than to control the minds of dozens of tiny, fourth grade, minions? Children are the future of our world, and so by controlling the children, I could control the world. All the effective leaders in history have used children to influence the future and/or do their bidding:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Baden-Powell,_1st_Baron_Baden-Powell

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus

            As it turned out, I didn’t get to work with the children directly at all, and so could not exert undue influence on their thought process, effectively defenestrating my ambitious ambitions.

            My grand scheme was ruined, but at least I got to help some kids have some “lulz”, and after all, isn’t that the purpose of life ( http://www.bookoflulz.blogspot.com)?

            In short, I was expecting to work with the kids and have some sort of grand influence to both increase my ego and help the world in a majestically impressive way, and with the children out of reach, my dreams vanished and my ego popped. I was left with nothing but dye-stained hands (from mixing color into the icing for the sugar skulls) and a vague sense of dissatisfaction.

But from the ashes of this horrendous defeat, I rebuilt.

Like Alexander the Great rebuilding Carthage from the ashes of the Roman sack, I cast the subject in a different light. What if it wasn’t a defeat, but a learning experience sent from OUR HOLY FATHER(http://www.biblegateway.com/), who chose to use his powers to help me grow as a person instead of killing Hitler or stopping World War III (in the future, of course; GOD works outside of time) because HE works in mysterious ways?

What I learned from this divine influence is that I don’t have to do great things to have a positive impact on the world. My experiences at the museum haven’t taught me any real skills, unless mixing disgusting icing in massive quantities can be considered one, but they have taught me to enjoy helping out in miniscule quantities.

I learned of my own internal selfishness from volunteering at the museum. The concept of volunteering is rather romanticized in modern media, with selfless and tireless citizens held up as paragons of moral supremacy and American exceptionalism. Given this, it came as a shock when I examined my reasons for volunteering and found among them selfish desires for recognition and control. This isn't a dramatic tale of how I overcame my baser and selfish human instincts, though. I still have those urges. But when I saw that those were the ONLY reasons that I was volunteering, I felt rather goofy, and when I examined what I was actually doing at the museum, I realized that I was doing something great after all, prompting me to rethink my thought process for doing service.

I feel that I am simply a better person for having spent my time volunteering at the Art After School program. My core philosophy on how to make an impact on the world radically shifted during my time there, and I can now go out in confidence and live a more fulfilling life. I know that this may sound like satirical crud, especially coming form me; however, I am being completely serious when I say these things. I really am an improved human being and have learned a lot from this experience.

On Icing and the Fate of Humanity

          Of all the noble goals that one can strive to achieve, I believe that education and the enhancement of creativity are among the noblest. It is for this reason that I volunteer two hours each week at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (www.amset.org), whose stated goal is to “provide education, inspiration and creative vision throughout Southeast Texas” through “unique collections, exhibitions, public programs and outreach in the visual arts”. In particular, I volunteer for the Art After School program, which seeks to achieve this goal with an after-school program and creative projects for children.

            My first time volunteering at the museum certainly did not initially feel like I was helping to achieve a noble goal. In preparation for upcoming Day of the Dead celebrations that the children would participate in, I and the other volunteers were set working to make icing (<---super informative how-to link) to decorate sugar skulls (<---super informative how-to link).

            I had been hoping to work with the children to benefit mankind and had envisioned myself pushing the cart of humanity up a steep hill towards the goal of an educated, free, democratic, liberal, creative, accepting, and all-around amazing society, and I now found myself sitting in a cramped kitchen, listening to the incessant and obnoxiously loud cranking of the ancient mixer creating loads of icing.

            In this time of darkness, I consoled myself with the thought that the icing would be delicious, and that I might at least sample this delectable delicacy.

            Alas, I was mistaken. It was disgusting (not like that icing recipe up there. This stuff was really nasty).

            This horrific finding was the final blow towards driving me into the pit of despair, a realm of infinite frustration. All hope had been lost; I wasn’t accomplishing anything useful for humanity, and I couldn’t eat a sweet treat.

            But then, like the sudden break in the clouds during a hurricane or the miraculous appearance of a lighthouse to a sailor that had given up all hope of remaining alive on the tempestuous seas, an beatific image appeared to me. In this angelic vision, a gang of happy fourth graders sat with their sugar skulls, merrily piping onto them the icing that I was helping to prepare. And in that moment, I realized that while I may not be pushing that cart, I was at least helping to grease the axles. After all, the end goal of the Art After School program wasn't to fulfill my desire to do something great or puff my ego up even more; it was to let those kids, many of whom came from impoverished and non-optimal home environments, have a good time and learn.

            The actual importance of my meager two hours of icing-making, when compared to the dozens of gallons produced by other herculean volunteers whose stories are told to this very day, is questionable, to say the least. But I still felt that I had learned a valuable lesson: not all turns of the wheel towards that dream of a utopia world becoming reality were that impressive. My time at the museum has been spent not doing momentous tasks, but assisting underprivileged fourth graders in their artistic endeavors, and that is perfectly okay with me.

            And at the end of the day, my voracious stomach was satisfied and my appetite sated with the consumption of a sour cream and cheddar Pringles canister provided to us by the museum, in thanks for our heroic sacrifice of two hours. Despite the lack of delicious icing, everything turned out acceptably.